An article in Salon (http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/08/13/cam_girls/index.html) got me looking through the world of webcam sites where a lot of bandwidth and storage is expended on shots of the site's creator. It's an intrigueing phenomenon.

Take a look at this Yahoo Club for some interesting pictures of the site's owner mugging for the camera:

http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/charmcam

You'll have to join, then go to Pictures and select the portfolio "**i got the digital cam to work!". The first eight shots are of the owner.

And the statistics for today are interesting too:

Members: [9314] Page Views: [1470457] Founded: [October 23, 2000 218 members logged in Number of visitors: 1155 83 people joined the club Page Views Today: 11494

-- John Kantor (jkantor@mindspring.com), August 16, 2001

Answers

I find the entire web-cam thing interesting, dating back (of course) to Jennicam and others. In part I find it interesting because the internet is at once anonymous - where your screen name can have a lot or a little to do with you - and at the same time you can post very personal things like pictures from your couch or bedroom. Gee, when I was in high school we never did anything like this :-)

On the subject of people photography:
From a self-portrait perspective, at Charmcam's club, I liked the ones in this folder: "%^august" She switched a few to black and white and I think they are pretty good, especially for a self-portrait. If you look at enough folders you'll see that most of the photos are the same, although you get a few good expressions.

-- brian reeves (bri1217@yahoo.com), August 16, 2001.

I would say that they aren't self-portraits - but performances.

-- John Kantor (jkantor@mindspring.com), August 18, 2001.